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Friday, July 28, 2006
By Janice Francis-Smith
The Journal Record (Illustration by Neil Cambre)
OKLAHOMA CITY – Though the candidate with the most contributions is generally considered the front-runner in any race, the results of Tuesday’s primary elections showed that money doesn’t always guarantee votes.
On the Democrat side, the lieutenant governor’s race followed the traditional formula. State Rep. Jari Askins, D-Duncan, had raised the most money – more than $530,000, including $350,000 she had loaned to her own campaign – and she came in first at the polls, with just over 40 percent of the votes. Pete Regan came in second in fundraising, with just over $420,000, and he came in second at the polls with 29 percent of the vote.
State Sen. Cal Hobson, a latecomer to the race because he chose to wait until after the legislative session was over to announce his candidacy, raised more than $205,000 and came in third at 18 percent. Jim Rogers, who didn’t raise enough to report to the Oklahoma Ethics Commission, came in last with 12 percent.
The Republican primary in the lieutenant governor’s race, however, bore some surprises. House Speaker Todd Hiett’s more than $1 million in campaign contributions garnered him first place in the race, with 42.82 percent of the vote. Sen. Scott Pruitt came in second with 33.73 percent of the vote and more than $748,000 in contributions – coming closer to Hiett’s lead in votes than he did in contributions.
State Sen. Nancy Riley came in third in campaign contributions and third at the polls. But she managed to parlay just $11,000 in campaign contributions into 23.46 percent of the vote. Pruitt raised 68 times as much money as Riley, but Tuesday night’s primary results showed a 10-point difference between the two candidates, representing less than 20,000 votes.
“We spent less than a dollar per vote,” said Riley from her Tulsa home on Wednesday. “My husband says Hiett spent $13 per vote and Pruitt spent $15 per vote. We had the right message, I think. We didn’t have the media money.”
While Hiett’s and Pruitt’s television ads ran repeatedly during the last weeks of the campaign, Riley had no television ads at all – just a half-page ad in the newspaper and radio spots on the agricultural networks on Friday and Monday, she said.
“People want to hear good things about Oklahoma,” said Riley. “And they just responded to that message wholeheartedly.”
She and her husband/campaign manager worked hard and worked smart, she said, paying attention to the statistics and directing their efforts to areas where the registered Republican numbers provided the greatest bang for the buck. Riley said she next plans to run for re-election in her Senate district, but she did not rule out another run for lieutenant governor in the future.
“They probably will not underestimate me on the next go-around,” she said.
In the governor’s race as well, Tulsa oil and gas businessman Bob Sullivan raised well over $1 million, which included a $100,000 loan from himself, while U.S. Rep. Ernest Istook’s campaign raised about $700,000. Still, Sullivan said his campaign could not overcome the fact that from the beginning of the campaign, voters were already familiar with the 12-year congressman. Istook garnered nearly 55 percent of the vote, while Sullivan won just under 31 percent.
Posted at 7/28/2006 11:14:00 AM  
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